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Copyrighted 1891. 






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THE 

PHARISEE AND WITCH-BURNER 

IN 

MODERN POLITICS. 



CHAPTER I. 

THE COUNTRY VOTER. 

It is the design of this work to act in the mind of the 
reader as the rudder of a ship in the hands of a trust- 
worthy pilot. The ship may, in the regular and legiti- 
mate pursuit of its calling, touch at ports that arouse 
anything but pleasant emotions in the minds of 
some of its patrons, but for all that they have no quarrel 
with the rudder, whose only function is to guide the craft 
safely past the shoals and rocks, and mayhap the wrecks, 
more or less antiquated, that lie in its general course. 
Whatever may be the ultimate fate of the vessel, the 
rudder, if it shall have faithfully performed its duty at all 
times in the many and varied cruises of the weather-beaten 
hulk, can have no regrets, and must be accorded by all 
men what it shall have justly won, credit for doing its 
work; conscientiously and well. 

The rudder that shall pilot faithfully through the mind 
of the reader the craft of Truth, in connection with certain 
developments and innovations in our politics, will be 



4 Pharisee and Witch- Burner in Modern Politics. 

amply satisfied if it leaves those who do it the honor to 
inspect the vessel, with the conviction that they have 
been enlightened upon things which have hitherto seemed 
dark and difficult of comprehension. It may be as well 
to state at the outset one fact as a general proposition, 
about the correctness of which it ma)' be safely assumed 
there is no dispute, namely: That the things in politics 
which seem darkert and most problematical 
mainly confined to large cities and towns. The saying, 
originating from a reverential appreciation of what app 
to our higher being in nature, that " th >r made the 

country and man made the town," may I to the 

mind of the reader a general ideaoftb upon which 

the above stated proposition is based, 

How often do we hear the assertion made by country 
members of a State Legislature, that "the city meml 
want everythin That there is an assumption on the 

part of political leaders residing in large cities that the 
country members of their party are less guileless than 
themselves, is a fact that stands more to the credit of the 
country partisan than to that of his city brother. 

The position of the country voter in the relation he 
bears to the city bred politician is somewhat peculiar. 
Almost a total stranger to the motives and objects which 
govern the political acts of the city man, he is yet a sort 
of " court of last resort" to which the latter appeals 
when he sees trouble ahead for his party. " We do 
not know how the country vote is going!" " We do 
not know what the country districts will do ! " How 
often are these expressions heard in the closing days of 



Pharisee and Witch- Bur tier in Modern Politics. 5 

an important State or National canvass, when both 
parties are in the height of anxiety over the question of 
the probable result. 

As a consequence of this universal tendency on the 
part of city politicians, or of city residents interested in 
political objects, of late years to appeal to the country 
voters, there has been a marked increase in one of the 
most useful branches of our industries, the printers' busi- 
ness, and the country voter has received in recent political 
campaigns, especially in Pennsylvania, enough printed 
circulars, pamphlets and newspapers, gratuitously, to 
make it quite an object to him, provided the old junk 
man and all-around dealer in waste paper and rags pur- 
sues his calling in the immediate neighborhood. 

It will be readily recognized by the country voter that, 
as he is an object of appeal for nothing less than his 
vote for purposes which, so far as the scope and aim 
of this work is concerned, have their origin in the 
brains of persons resident in large cities, he has a right 
to know something about the men who address him. 
Bearing in mind the fact that the city bred political 
man, whether he be a practical politician identified with 
one or other of the two parties, an amateur politician 
seeking notoriety to help on a precarious law business 
or some other calling in a condition equally unsatisfac- 
tory, or one of the ever dissatisfied dabblers in politics 
so hard to classify but sometimes known as Mugwumps, 
will equally bear close scrutiny as to the motives and 
objects animating them in their appeal to him, he will 
do well to reflect carefully before accepting what they 



6 Pharisee and Witch- Burner in Modern Politics. 

say in their circulars, their pamphlets, or their partisan 
and gratuitously distributed newspapers, as unshaken 
and unshakable truth. 



Pharisee and Witch-Burner in Modem Politics. 



CHAPTER II. 

THE FANATICAL REFORMER. 

It is always difficult in a narrative which deals with 
matters of fact, as distinguished from matters of fiction, to 
convey the exact truth of any given occurrence or to repre- 
sent faithfully, conscientiously and accurately, the motive 
which animates a person or persons in the pursuit of a 
given purpose. We are too ready to "jump at conclu^ 
sions," too ready in our hurry and pre-occupation of mind 
to accept shallow, fleeting impressions, the indefinite out- 
lines of the object, as conclusive evidence of its real form 
and nature. How often do we read in print things repre- 
sented as true, which we, from our individual knowledge 
of the facts or circumstances, know are far from beine 
true! How often do we hear our friends and neighbors 
make statements which, while we know they would not 
wilfully misrepresent, are known to us the moment they 
are uttered to be far from the truth, a knowledge which 
is none the less absolute by reason of our conscious- 
- that the words are said without due reflection, and 
that those who thus unwittingly falsify, speak from the 
fleeting and deceptive surface, impressions reinforced by 
prejudice and preconceived opinions, which the)' are will- 
ing to give out as truth. 

It is the consideration of such facts, perhaps, which has 
caused the old masters, the wise men of all ages, to echo 
the mournful saying, " the truth is hard." Our inherited 



8 Pharisee and Witch- Burner in Modern Politics. 

prejudices, our acquired habits and our temporal sur- 
roundings all conspire to make us accept what is waited 
to us from afar, from the more or less uncertain sayil 
of others, as the unquestioned truth, having lulled to 
sleep our own powers of reflection, of comparison, of 
analysis, of weighing and testing by our common-sense 
and reason, without which we cannot be sure of the truth 
at all. 

There was a time when men believed that witches 
travelled through space over a certain section of this 
land balanced upon nothing less common-place than 
a broom-stick, and the grim sequel to the matter 
was the fact that, with the sanction and upon the 
insistence of the spiritual teachers, who, — sitting in their 
studies and knowing little more than infants of th< 
practical world, — sincerely believed they were right, human 
beings were burned at the stake. We look back now at 
the spirit of intolerance and persecution which laid p 
helpless women upon the fagots at Salem less than two 
hundred years ago, and we wonder if there can be any- 
thing worse, of all the evils in the world, than an aroused 
fanaticism. 

It does not make the heart less full of pity for the 
wretched women who met such horrible deaths in the old 
Puritan town, to be told that the clergymen and the 
authorities, the good people, if you please, believed them- 
selves to be doing a heavenly duty. Their belief having 
brought about a consummation o£ the sacrifice, they could 
not restore the charred and shapeless bodies to life after 



Pharisee and Witch-Burner in Modern Politics, 9 

the scales had fallen from their eyes, and they found they 
had done atrocious murder. 

Whence does this spirit of intolerance, of assuming 
divinely invested authority to make others do as the 
deluded and zealous fanat'c himself believes, come? Not 
from the founder of the Christian religion, for he was 
all kind, all merciful, all tolerant. There is the record 
that he disliked the Pharisees, the men who rolled their 
eyes to Heaven and said, " I am holier than thou." 

The spirit of intolerance comes not from the practical 
man, not from the workingman, not from the men who 
labor on farms, or in the factories or in the mill. It was 
not observable among the poor fishermen with whom the 
Christian Teacher associated, and hence he was their 
associate. If a man w r as defamed, or villified, or abused 
in name and reputation by the Pharisees, the Saviour of 
mankind did not go to them and say " well done." On 
the contrary he, knowing the interested motives of men, 
knowing men's hearts, knew well that if a person were 
singled out by the Pharisees for abuse and dispraise, there 
was more hope for such a man than there was for the 
zealot and high-headed ones who defamed him. 

Our inherent regard for the past is apt to lead us into the 
error of supposing that the Pharisees of Scriptural time 
and the puritanic witch-burners of two hundred years ago 
in Massachusetts have no successors, that they were 
peculiar to the times in which they lived. Is this the 
truth ? Let us see. 

It only requires a survey of sixty years of the history 



IO 



Pharisee and Witch-Burner in Modern Politics. 



of Philadelphia to disclose the fact that an element of 
the "best Citizens," including clergymen and doctors and 
lawyers and merchants, rose in arms when it was pro- 
posed to introduce gas through the streets. They held 
town meetings and issued solemn addresses against the 
dangerous innovation. They petitioned councils and 
the authorities to frown down such a hazardous scheme, 
as the gas would surely become ignited and the flame, 
running through the pipe under ground, would blow up 
the city and destroy the pr md people. 

The gas came in time and the " best citizens," the clergy- 
men, the doctors, the lawyers and the merchants h 
satisfied. Nothing blew up, and their belief was 
changed. They found they had been too hasty, but 
there is no record that any of them ever openly admit 
it. 

Then, easily within the memory of middle-aged men 
now living there came another fever of puritanic intoler- 
ance and impracticability. Some of the "best citizens' 
were much aggrieved over the fact that the elections 
were not going right. They looked about and finally 
came to the conclusion that they had been appointed by 
Providence to correct the evil, and they set about with a 
zeal and impatience, always characteristic of such a cl 
to do it. The fanatic, who feels called upon to reform 
something, can always find his victim. This time the 
" best citizens," the clergymen, the doctors, the lawyers 
and the merchants found their victims in certain poor 
foreigners. Philadelphia had at that time as it has to-day, 
a great many Irishmen — honest, hard-working, cheerful- 



Pharisee and Witch-Burner in Modern Politics. 1 1 

hearted men who had come over to the new country 
to better their condition, just as the ancestors of the 
"best citizens " had done years before. 

The "best citizens " began to persecute the people of 
foreign birth by agitating the question of depriving them 
of the right to vote. They formed what was called the 
"Know Nothing Party." But like the opposition of their 
predecessors to the introduction of gas, " nothing blew 
up M except the " Know Nothing Party " and the " best 
citizens" themselves. 



1 2 Pharisee and Witch- Burner in Modern Politics, 



CHAPTER III. 

SOME PHARISAIC TRAITS. 

If the Pharisee of to-day is intolerant, narrow and 
defamatory in matters connected with public improve- 
ments and the expenditure of money therefor, what is his 
disposition in the world of politics? In the temporary 
heat and excitement of a campaign such as the American 
system of politics, where every man stands upon an 
equality, produces, the successors of the Pharisees and 
witch-burners amply vindicate the spirit and doctrine of 
their predecessors. They acquire a notion from reading 
newspapers that everything is wrong in politics, and that 
there is a u call M for them to band themselves together, 
not for the purpose of going out and mingling with the 
people and familiarizing themselves with the facts of the 
matter. They have not been used to associating with 
the hard toilers of the world. Their ideas of politics 
have been gathered from reading in their cozy libraries, 
not American books, but English books perhaps; and it 
is the simple truth to say that when your Pharisee in 
politics sees anything in an English book or newspaper 
that speaks to the discredit or dispraise of politics or 
government, municipal, State or National, in his own 
country he gloats over it as if he had found a rare treasure. 
If the defamatory words are in a newspaper he cuts them 
out and carefully preserves them ; if they are in a book 
he carefully marks the place. 



Pharisee and Witch- Burner in Modern Politics. 13 

And note one peculiarity about the Pharisee in politics : 
he would rather a hundred-fold read something derogatory 
to the politics of his own country in an English newspaper 
or book than in a newspaper or book printed in his own 
land. The reason is not difficult to understand. 
When he sees the villification in the foreign print it flat- 
ters his vanity that the mind of some one in the faraway 
country across the water whom he has never seen nor 
heard of, exactly corroborates his own view of the matter. 
The effect of this new consciousness in him is an increased 
activity in the business of political witch-burning, and an 
increased disregard of facts and boldness of defamatory 
utterance. He is thenceforth a victim of Angliaphobia, 
and in his rabid, venomous assaults upon the character 
of men prominent in the politics of his country he far 
excels any foreign defamer of his land that the gener- 
ation can produce. 

Note also another reason. The Pharisee in very many 
cases, indeed in cases numerically in the proportion of 
nine to ten, wears foreign-made clothing, and is connected 
financially with enterprises dependent upon foreign capital. 
In Philadelphia, the most prominent of the political Phar- 
isees are connected with fire and marine insurance com- 
panies which have their main offices in London or Liver- 
pool ; or they are dealers in woolens or worsteds, and 
have mills and factories operated by cheap labor in 
England or Germany ; or they are importers who have 
been in the habit of buying their goods from abroad for 
years, regardless of the fact that the growing industries 
of their own country can furnish as good an article 



14 Pharisee and Witch- Burner in Modern Politics. 

and in very many cases a much better one ; and they have 
formed a liking for everything English and foreign 
and acquired a prejudice against the products and the 
habits of the nation of their birth. 

These are the ''interested Pharisees." Incensed at the 
existing government because its policy is not such as 
suits their pet foreign hobbies, they seek I urn the 

party in power, carefully cloaking their real moti 
They attack the party of the government, defame 
leaders, give hearty welcome to all publications that 
malign, villify and misrepresent, never inhering 

the injunctions of the Christian Preceptor to " have charity 
for all," or to " set a seal upon thy lip 

We have spoken of this class of political zealots or 
witch-burners as "interested Pharisees," in order that 
those who are prompted in their political action, pa 
but not wholly, by mercenary motives, may be seen and 
recognized by the reader. We shall now proceed to 
describe the co-ordinate branch of the Pharisee tribe, 
who, animated by motives not mercenary, are found 
standing shoulder to shoulder with the others with 
mouths open, ever ready to emit venomous, calumnious 
utterances ; ever ready to interpret the sayings of 
public men to their detriment; ever ready to throw out 
the crafty, cunning, cruel insinuation ; ever ready to deal 
with harmful inuendo; ever ready to give aid and coun- 
tenance to the hurtful report, and always, always more 
ready, more willing, more delighted to speak, hear and 
read of what is ill against men of prominence in public 



Pharisee and Witch- Burner in Modem Politics. 15 

affairs than to speak, hear and read of what is in their 
favor. 

It is not a very lovable class of mankind we have to 
deal with, and we fancy we can hear the reader murmur 
something about the justice of our rendering an apology 
for introducing them to him. But we feel that he has 
need to know them for several reasons. He should know 
them for one reason that he may know how much their 
counsel is worth. He should know them for another 
reason that he may know who is largely responsible for 
the deplorable tendency of late years to conduct our 
political campaigns on the basis of bitter and disgraceful 
personalities. He should know them atso that he may 
be forewarned against that self-assuming, narrow ele- 
ment which is found in every age, and which, in 
self-laudatory spirit, delights in calling itself " our best 
citizens," just as the Pharisees of the Christian founder's 
time and the witch-burners of Cotton Mathers' time 
delighted in doing, and which feels itself called upon to 
reform something, not by quiet, patient work, but by 
perturbed, half- digested ideas and appeals, not to speak 
of abusive and defamatory methods. 

For these reasons, among others, he should know them ; 
and that he may know them, we shall endeavor to truth- 
fully describe them in the next chapter. 



1 6 Pharisee and Witch- Burner in Modem Politics. 



CHAPTER IV. 

ORIGIN OF M0TIV1 

It has been frequently said that when a man hoards up 

wealth and leaves it to his children, they will soon find 
means to scatter it. 

This saying may be true in the main, and it may be 
wholly true in some localities, but not in Philadelphia. 
The city of Penn is essentially a city where money made 
by one generation is saved, and in many Ided to 

by another. 

There are in Philadelphia some families whose ancestors 
made their money truck-farming and also in the ship 
chandlering line. The descendants of the worth}' truck 
gardener and ship chandler are now persons of m< 
and importance in the city. They have costly homes, 
ample libraries and plenty of leisure. They sit in their 
libraries and read much of the time, go to the opera in 
winter, go cruising in their yachts to the West Indies, or 
to Rye Beach, New Hampshire, or elsewhere in summer. 

In the abundance of their leisure in their costly and 
beautiful homes, they get " out of joint " with the masses 
of the people around them. Never having occasion to soil 
their hands with work, they do not come in contact with 
the mechanic, the laboring man or the artisan. They 
know as little about making a living by toil as a child 
unborn. 

These men, from the lack of something to do, 



Pharisee and Witch- Burner in Modern Polities. 17 

become impatient to make themselves felt in the world. 
The\- conceive the idea from reading the daily journals 
that something is wrong. The}' ma}- have a pardonable 
desire to see their names in the newspapers. This is 
frequently the case. 

They get to theorizing about government. Things are 
not going right politically. They have read the name of 
a certain leader quite frequently in the newspapers, read 
a great many things about him, some things not to his 
credit, as is very likely in cases of newspaper mention of 
public men. The}' have conceived somehow or other a 
dislike for him. The more they think about him the 
more they dislike him. They have never seen him. 
How could they have personal knowledge of him since 
they do not mingle with the masses, and know practically 
nothing about the affairs of the people. Their time has 
been taken up collecting rents, traveling in Europe, cruis- 
ing in yachts and theorizing in their libraries. 

Now, however, they have made up their minds to do 
something. The leader whom they have read about has 
too much power. They have begun to hate him. They 
readily believe everything they hear about him, no matter 
how bad it is. If they should be told that he had horns 
and hoofs they would perhaps agree that it must be 

It is apparent that these harmless non-producers of the 
necessaries of life, living their easy lives on the money 
left them by their fathers or acquired by shrewd and 
worldly-wise marriages, easily have their zeal fired by the 
first class of Pharisees, the "interested Ph The 

two classes band themselves together and go into politics, 



1 8 Pharisee and Witch- Burner in Modern Politics. 

not as active participants in the struggle on the field, but 
as a "best citizens" corps, who stay by themselves and 
invariably take the side of the weaker party. It is alto- 
gether a matter of sentiment with them. They have 
nothing in common with the material inter the 

masses of practical, struggling men, though they may in 
reality imagine they have, and may do good in the 
churches and Sabbath schools one day in a week, no 
matter how much defaming and " ca- - 
and general uncharitableness they may have done in the 
other six days. 

It is this class of men that has given us one of the most 
widely known, as well as one of the most popular char- 
acterizations in the English language for use in describ- 
ing a particular group of persons found in almost c\ 
community, who are a little world unto then 
and who are against everything that does not conform 
with their way of thinking, — "a mutual admiration 
society." 

The sun, the moon, the stars, the great works of nature 
have no significance to the minds of these people. Out- 
side their counting rooms, where thrifty bargains are 
made with secret profits at the expense of country busi- 
ness men, that w r ould make your ordinary political office- 
holder open his eyes wide in astonishment that he had 
something yet to learn, they have perpetual visions of 
receptions in fashionable dress, of the flavor of terrapin 
and of the opportunities which will be afforded for the 
display of their wealth, and the indulgence of mutual 
felicitation and the enjoyment of crude compliments; for 



Pharisee and Witch-Burner in Modern Politics. 19 

your "mutual admiration society" man is great at 
expressing himself in smart, glib remarks, calculated to 
please his fellow member. 

It is perhaps no exaggeration to say that the spirit of 
"mutual admiration " is more fully developed among the 
two classes of Pharisees heretofore described in Philadel- 
phia than among those of any other city in the Union. 
If the epidemic of " witch-burning " were to break out in 
America again it is fairly within the range of probability 
that it would not be in Massachusetts, nor in any part of 
New England, where it would first show itself, but in 
Philadelphia, among those Pharisees who are too good 
to belong to any political party, either Republican or 
Democratic, but who are a select band of impracticable 
beings endeavoring to make a little party of their own, 
by sending out pamphlets, addresses and circulars 
defaming public men and legislative bodies, in the hope of 
securing recruits. 

It is not the purpose of this work to do this peculiar 
element of citizens any injustice, lest the tender feelings 
of any member of the mutually admiring group might be 
hurt. They are here with us with all their bowing and 
scraping and deferential airs and manners toward one 
another, and they cannot be exterminated. They have 
their use in the world, perhaps, even though that use has 
not been made apparent to men. 

Yet we know how quickly the}' would dwindle out of 

tin the presence of son National uprising, — in 

the presence of a war, for example, which would call into 

play all the practical and great qualities of our public 



20 Pharisee and Witch-Burner in Modern Politics. 

men, «of our party leaders. It is only in long periods of 
peace and prosperity that the modern Pharisee in poll! 
flourishes. He is suffering for somethingto do, as we 
have said, and he gets to theorizing. He constn 

beautiful castles, the turrets of which cast their shad 
into the millennium. The theories h< in his 

deluded brain he believ* t truths, and h< 

to find followers to " reform the old party" or found a 
new one. 

These Pharisees flourished in ire-worn Lincoln's 

time. They were his bitterest and n nomous 

assailants. The coming of the war drove them ii 
back-ground, whence the main portion of them emer 
after Lincoln's nation, and took tl 

those who were that great men's chief mourners and 
eulogists. 

As has been said, it is not designed to represent th< 
persons in any light save that in which they pre 
themselves. We try to o\o them justice in our descrip- 
tion of them. We cannot find fault that they they 
are. It is natural to them. As well might we displ 
feeling of anger that the nature of a jackal, or of a lizard, 
or of a snake is what it is. We have *o quarrel with the 
snake, or the lizard/tor the jackal any more than we have 
a quarrel with the political Pharisee and witch-bu: 
He is here and he is what he is. He believes he is ri 
and according to his nature and his light, he is right. 
He defames public men, spreads the slime of his calumny 
and rancorous venom over them, and sleeps the sounder 
for it at night, feels the better for it when he goes to 



Pharisee and Witch- Burner in Modern Politics. 



21 



church ; and shall we indulge in anger with him because he 
is simply following the bent of his nature? 

We do not get angry at the snake when it hisses at us, 
nor. at the skunk when it ejects the noisome fluid ; we only 
avoid them. Both the snake and the skunk believe they 
are doing right when they thus assail us, and there is no 
doubt that the political Pharisee believes he is right when 
he traduces public men and adds to the already unhealthy 
atmosphere of a heated political canvass his stock of dis- 
graceful personalities and skillfully worded insinuations. 



22 Pharisee and Witch- Burner in Modern Politics. 



CHAPTER V. 

THE PHARISEE ON " HIGH GROUND." 

Let the reader now withdraw his mind from the con- 
templation of that phase of the political Pharisee's nature 
which relates to his resemblance to the animal of the 

noisome vapor, and see him as he desires to be seen 
before the world. 

He is eminently respectable in his connections and in 
his appearance. He frequently makes speeches on the 
current evils in politics, in a small squeaking 
and no man living can take exception to the high ground 
upon which he builds his platform. lie stands before 
his audience a really good man. Sometimes tl 
those present who are unkind enough to remark that he 
"broke up" this or that church and drove the mini 
out of the congregation because he "wanted his own 
way." This may be true, and it is very likely to be true 
of our political Pharisee, but it must be remembered he 
is doing what he believes to be right, although a short- 
sighted posterity may not realize that he ever exist 

He stands before his audience speaking from his high 
ground, in his small, squeaking voice, his right hand often- 
times given to the see-saw gesture. His present per- 
formance is different from writing secret defamatory 
pamphlets, circulars or addresses to " the voters of the 
State." 

He talks like one who is conscious that he would have 



Pharisee and Witch- Burner in Afodern Politics. 23 

been a shining light in the ministry, but does not, at the 
same time, wish to make the modest gentleman in black 
who sits near him, the clergyman, feel badly by excelling 
him in the display of his morality or his delivery, though 
of course, if the comparison in his favor is apparent to 
the eyes of the audience, he cannot help it. 

The evils of politics are the crying evils of the day. 
The political leaders are all corrupt. They should be 
overthrown and good men should be put in their places 
and " sound political methods " should again hold sway. 

As the political Pharisee delights in decrying and 
discrediting the politics of his country in the eyes of stran- 
gers, of foreigners, he is never satisfied with the present 
He is morally certain that the generation in which he 
lives is the worst his city and State ever saw. He con- 
tinually laments the degeneracy of the times, the decline 
of talent and leadership in public men. He longs for 
the time when his State " held a position of honor among 
the States of the Union." 

Thus does he speak before his audience in his swallow- 
tail and choker, and he wins great applause and many 
flattering remarks. 

And while he is thus talking from his " high ground," 
and straining his eyes to see in the future the restoration 
of that " honor " to his State which he claims she has 
lost, there is another picture that might well be placed in 
contrast. There sits in his home, or in a hotel away 
from the comforts of his home, weary and meditative, 
that political leader who has come in for such a great 
share of abuse from our truly good political Pharisee 



24 Pharisee and Witch-Burner in Modern Politics. 

The hour is late, the fire in his room has burned low. 
Upon his table are heaps of letters and telegrams and 
visitors' cards, some of them torn, and their fragments 
littering the floor. 

He has evidently had much on his mind. He sits 
now quiet, meditative, reflective. A knock falls upon his 
door. So comfortable, so restful, after his bu 
must he now be disturbed! "Come in!" he calls in a 
patient, even voice, which shows no sign of the irritation 
he first felt. 

It is a humble looking caller who enters. The truly 
good political Pharisee would think of handing him over 
to a policeman if he knocked upon his door at this time 
of night. He is, perhaps, a middle-aged man, rather seedy 
in appearance, slightly embarrassed about making the 
object of his visit known, and rather backward generally. 

" How do you do," says the political leader, whom our 
Pharisee has been only a few moments before so roundly 
abusing, yet whom he has never seen. The leader shal 
the hand of his humble visitor and asks him to have a 
chair. 

The man sits down. " What can I do for you ? " asks 
the political leader in a kindly tone which places the 
caller at his ease at once. 

" I'll tell you," says the visitor in an earnest voice; 
" I've come to see if you couldn't get me a place. I've 
been out of work for a longtime, except a little to do here 
and there, and my wife is sick and I want to get some- 
thing steady to do. I don't care what it is so it's work 
that will enable me to make a living." 



Pharisee and Witch-Burner in Modern Politics. 25 

44 What kind of work would you like to have? " asks 
the leader, taking an interest in the case at once. 

The visitor tells him, and for three-quarters of an hour 
the humble man who is out of employment, but who 
belongs to the same party as his chief, sits there and 
talks over his chances of getting work. It is only one 
of twenty similar cases which have been before the 
leader during the day in addition to other and more im- 
portant matters. 

What more important matters ? Does not the political 
leader have an easy time ? What other matters more 
important has he to look after ? 

Matters relating to the policies and plans of the party 
organization to which he belongs which may have a con- 
trolling influence in shaping the most momentous event 
of the nation ; matters which, when finally decided upon, 
may result in bringing about the nomination and election 
of a president of the greatest country on the globe ; matters 
which, once weighed and carefully examined by the brain 
of that man who has been and is so much abused by the 
political Pharisees and witch-burners, may result in turn- 
ing the tide of the nation's history just as the nomination 
of Lincoln over Seward, almost by an accident, brought 
about one of the grandest and most glorious achieve- 
ments that humanity has ever seen — freedom of four 
million human beings from bondage. 

The political Pharisee's bow has only one string to it, 
and he thrums and thrums upon it constantly. He does 
not know this political leader except through defamatory 
sources of information. If the leader is a Republican, 



26 Pharisee and Witch- Burner in Modern Politics. 

a member of the majority party, he may have done some- 
thing to incense the opposition party to the degree of 
burning wrath. He may have been the means of electing 
a president of his own political faith and of ousting one 
who belonged to the party of the opposite faith. If that 
is so, is it not probable that all the venom and spleen 
and malignity which partisan hate, disappointed aspira- 
tions, thwarted ambitions, destroyed political prosp 
and humbled part\- pride can produce, have been con- 
centrated upon that one shining leader of the hated 
opposition part)- to break him down, destroy his p< 
and cripple the great political army which h< led 

to victory. 

Have people cars, and do they not hear? Have they 
eyes, and do they not see ? 

But to return to the two pictures! — of our politi 
Pharisee, with his swallow-tail and choker, the trul 
man that he is, talking to his select audience from his 
"high ground" about the evils of politics; and our politi- 
cal leader in his room after a busy day, during which his 
brain was employed upon matters that may change the 
course of history in a country of nearly seventy milli 
people. The leader has had time, great as has been 
the nature of the business en which his mind \ 
engaged, to take up one of the most simple and ordinary 
affairs of life — the helping of a poor man to find a situa- 
tion whereby he can make a living for himself and 
family — and he is giving that matter just as much atten- 
tion, just as earnest an effort in proportion, as if it were 
an affair of the nation. He succeeds presently in getting 



Pharisee and Witch- Burner in Modern Polities. 27 

the man a position in the service of the City, State or 
National Governments, and the moment the appointment is 
made public the Pharisee denounces it as another 
evidence u[ the political leader's unfitness to occupy the 
position he holds, and forthwith cither calls a meeting of 
his committee to condemn it, issues a circular protesting 
.• gets up a type-written interview with him- 
self inveighing against it, — which interview usually starts 
out with the statement that he was very much disin- 
clined to talk, — and sends it to all the newspapers for 
publication. 



28 Pharisee and Witch-Burner in Modern Politics. 



CHAPTER VI. 

A QUESTION OF RIVALRY AS CURAT]'. 

We should like to digress here for a moment from 
the main theme, and invite the reader to deliberate with 
us upon what seems a serious problem, as between the 
political Pharisee with the squeaking voice and the 
swallow-tail and choker, and the political leader and his 
practical methods, as to the efficacy of the two men 
respectively, applying them as remedies fur the two most 
common ills that afflict a great many members of the 
human family — hunger and lack of work. 

Let us suppose that the timid, discouraged - fter 

work to keep himself and family from starving, ins: 
of going to the political leader, — with his practical, good- 
hearted ways, living in the present and dealing with the 
present in practical fashion, — had betaken himself to the 
political Pharisee, with his mind in the past or future and 
with his voice singing the mournful strain that thil 
were not as they used to be, that the standard of honor 
among public officials was not as high and that his State 
was a by- word and reproach among men. 

The poor man in search of labor, with the wife and 
hungry children dependent upon him, would perhaps : 
that he could stand the imaginary degeneracy of the 
honor of his times and his State with somewhat more 
satisfaction than he could bear the prospect of finding no 
bread. 



Pharisee and Witch-Burner in Modern Politics. 29 

The political Pharisee would hardly give the seeker 
after labor the opportunity to see him. He already has 
calls upon his charity. He is constantly giving money 
to alleviate the condition of the Indians. He cannot be 
expected to do more. He has even given valuable time 
and money to have an investigation made in order to 
determine whether this government which he finds so 
much fault with in the hands of the present political party, 
has been doing justice to the Indians. If there were no 
Indians in the country his charity perhaps would be 
applied to some of Stanley's dwarf races in Darkest Africa. 
For the political Pharisee is a great man for doing good 
after his own fashion. 

In this work we have endeavored to give every side 
of the character appertaining to the Pharisee that 
has any bearing upon or relation to the public. There 
is one phase of the subject however, upon which we 
have not touched, and yet it is one of the most conspicu- 
ous and important of all his traits and characteristics. 

The political Pharisee invariably claims to be a Repub- 
lican anxious to reform his party. He does not associate 
with the Democrats. There are no Democratic political 
Pharisees. Nobody living ever saw one. The Pharisee 
professes to believe, righteous man that he is, that 
the Democratic party is too bad for anybody to 
belong to. The burden of his life is the fear that if the 
Republican party is not purged of its corrupt leaders, his 
City and State will go Democratic. The prospect of this 
dreadful calamity brings tears to his eyes 1T0 doubt. 
They have not been seen by any known witnesses, but 



30 Pharisee and Witch- Burner in Modern Politics. 

there is no question that it is so, for he is always deploring 
a possible Democratic result, and it is clear that "where 
there is so much smoke, there must be some fire." 

This habit of the political Pharisee and witch-burner 
of classing himself as a Republican, is one of his striking 
peculiarities. It is a sure indication of his character. 



Pharisee and Witch- Burner in Modern Politics. 31 



CHAPTER VII. 

PHARISAIC STOLEN LIVERY. 

If there be any virtue in the practice of organizing 
political parties and of abiding with them after they have 
been organized, what position does the political Pharisee 
assume when he rails against party men and party leaders 
and sees merit only in the decision of the party man to 
yield to his importunate requests to desert his party and 
ally himself with his views and objects ? 

Desert his party for what ? Not that he may change 
his political belief. The Pharisee does not ask him ; he 
scorns the idea that he should be considered capable of 
asking him, to become a Democrat. He asks him only 
to vote for the candidates of *the Democratic party. His 
central thought and hope .are that the candidate of his 
own party, or of the party to which he claims to belong, 
shall be defeated. 

In due course of time the election takes place and the 
Pharisee's wish is gratified. The Republican party has 
been defeated. m Democracy has been triumphant. 

Another election period approaches. Again the politi- 
cal Pharisee, who may be supposed to be still farther than 
ever alienated from his former party associates, espouses 
the cause of the Democratic candidate. This time his 
hope is not realized. The Democratic candidate is de- 
feated and Republicanism is triumphant. 

The Pharisee, further than ever outside the pale of his 



32 Pharisee and Witch- Burner in Modern Politics. 

former organization, again makes common cause with the 
Democracy. He sends out solemn circulars and app 
not to Democrats, but to Republican voters and signs 
himself "a Republican voter." 

There are some deceptions which are practiced year 
after year upon an ordinarily wide-awake public by de- 
signing persons and no word of protest is uttered. What 
greater imposition on the confidence of hon< 
can be carried into effect than the one just >ed? 

How long shall a man, who imagines himself too goo 
stay within the folds of his party, and who 
in advocating and otherwise seeking the election of a 
candidate of the opposite organization, be justified in 
holding the name of the party to which he once belonged ? 
Why does he cling to that party name when his act-, and 
thoughts, and opinions have been and are henceforth 
altogether hostile to it? Why does he send out cir- 
culars and appeals to honest and unsuspecting 
of the party in which he originally held membership, in- 
voking their aid and co-operation in his destructive work 
against that party, and sign himself " a Republican ? " 

Is he a Republican ? Does the common sense of men 
assert itself in his case and recognize the falsehood, the 
wailful design to mislead which is wholly invested in his 
claim? He has been voting for Democratic candidates 
for ten years past, with perhaps one or two excepti 
There have been two tickets a year placed before him f >r 
the exercise of his suffrages, making twenty in the entire 
period, and he has voted for three Republican tickets and 
for seventeen Democratic tickets. In the name of com- 



Pharisee and Witch- Bur tier in Modern Politics. 33 

mon sense and reason why does he sign himself in his 
circulars and petitions addressed to the voters of the 
party to which he once bore allegiance, " a Republican ?" 
Why does he not openly and in manly fashion go over 
to the Democratic party in name as he does in act ? Is 
he ashamed of that party and therefore desirous of doing 
his part to aid it secretly because of that shame ? If not, 
what reason can he give for assuming the covert, skulk- 
ing attitude that belongs not to honorable, courageous, 
practical men, but to creeping, cowering traitors ? 



34 Pharisee and Witch-Burner in Modern Politics. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

the Pharisee's u black bea 

The literary style of the political Pharisee has become 
so familiar in his prodigal use of pamphlets, circulars and 

addresses of late that any one reasonably i 

recent political campaigns ally in Pennsylvania, 

can almost repeat some of them by heart. 

This work would perhaps be deemed incomplete if we 

refrained from furnishing an example ofthe literary work 
of the gentleman who, voting constantly for the Demo- 
cratic, Independent or Prohibition tickets, alwa) 
himself "a Republican." In pursuance of the d 
enlighten the reader as to the character ofthe matter he 
usually sends out we extract some passages from a re 
pamphlet which has been the product of hi . the 

object of which is an assault on a political leader who 
has been a shining mark for the Pharisee for some 
months past and the nature of whose offending 1; 
in reality the management ofthe last Republican Xati« >nal 
campaign in such able and skillful manner as to bring 
about the election of a Republican President. 

The pamphlet, according to its title, is "An Addre 
the Citizens of Pennsylvania Protesting Against Quayism 
in the Republican Party." It reads — and we call upon 
the reader to note carefully the truly good professions 
which it makes as to its motives — as follows : 



Pharisee and Witch-Burner in Modern Politics. 



35 



"As Pennsylvanians, and as Republicans, we, the under- 
signed, feel constrained to address our fellow-citizens 
throughout the State upon the present political situation, 
— to point out what we believe to be the essential causes 
of the alarming degradation in public affairs from which 
we now suffer, and the necessary steps toward improve- 
ment. 

"The Republican machine in this State, under the leader- 
ship of Senator Quay and those lieutenants whom he has 
drawn about him, is corrupt and in strong contrast with 
the rank and file of the party. That leadership is as 
absolute in its control as it is unscrupulous in its methods 
and disastrous in its results. With Senator Quay's polit- 
ical record the public is so familiar that it is unnecessary 
at this time to give a detailed history of those more 
remote public acts through which its notoriety was 
acquired, while a brief reference to its more recent events 
is appropriate in order to detect clearly the present situa- 
tion." 



The u address " then goes on to arraign this Republi- 
can leader for many and various acts. It charges him 
with being responsible for the " overwhelming disaster 
which befell the Republican party in this State during the 
past autumn " — which is, perhaps, one of the most amaz- 
ing examples of effrontery yet furnished by queer human- 
ity, since the Pharisees themselves were in the main 
responsible for that " overwhelming disaster " in having 
worked and voted for the Democratic candidate for 
governor. 



36 Pharisee and Witch-Burner in Modern Politics. 

The address continues, and finally, pausing to take 
breath from its hot pursuit after Senator Quay, a 
diversion assails the last Republican legislature. It talks 
in favor of " reform within the party," and yet the wr 
of it and all his fellow Pharisees afterward united and 
opposed the election of the Republican candidate 
Treasurer of Philadelphia, in the campaign of November, 
1891, although he had been one of the most earnest, con- 
sistent and faithful reform workers Philadelphia had < 
seen, and one of the original members of the Commit 
of One Hundred. The Pharisees found reason for opposing 
him in the fact that lie had been nominated by the Repub- 
lican Convention — a great concession to reform and a 
great opportunity to enforce the doctrine- of "reform 
within the party." The Pharisaic malcontents, 1 
preferred the Democratic candidate, and worked, sent out 
tickets, and voted for him. 

In the light of the true character of these persons, their 
"address to the citizens of Pennsylvania " against : 
Quay, seems amazing. It does not require a phil< 
to see the ridiculous contrast between themselves and the 
party leader who is the object of their venom. There 
is something inexpressibly ludicrous in their position, 
when we reflect that one hundred years from now, if 
one of their old " addresses " should come to light, 
posterity will be well acquainted with the name of Quay, 
but it will have to wrinkle its brows for awhile before it can 
recall the name of any of his traducers. Men do not ac- 
quire the commanding position and the power held and 
wielded by Senator Quay by chance, any more than 



Pharisee a fid Witch- Burner in Modern Politics. 37 

great generals attain their prominence and fame by- 
chance. There must be merit, there must be power of 
mind, qualities of discernment, accurate judgment of 
men and things, a cool head and a practical application 
of means to ends. If our Pharisees should, by the com- 
mon consent of the people and of the leaders of the 
people, be elevated to the commanding position of Senator 
Quay and of other public men, we should likely see for a 
time a queer country and a queer sort of government. 

We could calculate upon one of them at least devot- 
ing the energies and resources of the government 
primarily to the care and benefit of the Indians of the far 
West, regardless of the fact that the poor and hungry 
whom we have amongst us in the East might be pros- 
trate and crying on his door-step, for bread. There is so 
much more opportunity for notoriety in making the 
bestowal of charity upon the distant Indians our pet 
hobby than in quietly looking after and providing for 
the needs of the poor in our own immediate vicinity. 

The signatures to this "address to the people of Penn- 
sylvania" against Senator Quay will bear studying. 
There is a " provisional committee of nine members. Of 
this number three of them are known to have voted 
against James G. Blaine for President, one more ran for 
office in the Autumn of 1 8 8 1 , upon an Independent ticket 
with Democratic endorsement, and perhaps not one of 
them has voted the Republican ticket successively in the 
past five years. 

The "provisional committee," which, by the way, 
assumes somewhat the manner of a committee of safety 



38 Pharisee and Witch- Burner in Modern Politics. 

in the days of the French revolution, announces that it 
has three hundred and twenty-two names to its add' 
against Mr. Quay. The names and addresses of the 
signers are given and an analysis of them reveals the fact 
that only eighty-one of them reside outside Philadelphia. 
The grappling hooks of the Phari seem to 

have caught an overload of "innocents" out in th 
Perhaps the native honest}- of the country voter gave him 
a clear insight into the true motives of these nun who 
claim to be Republicans while voting the Democratic, 
Independent and Prohibition tic: idily for y( 

past, and seeking to demoralize and belitt; or- 

ganization so far as it is Republican, in order to satisfy 
wounded vanity and disappointed ambition. 

Once more let the reader reflect that one hundred 
years from now this manifestation on the part of our 
political Pharisees and witch-burners, if a photograph 
of the times could be preserved for posterity, will ap; 
even more laughable than it is now. One hundred y 
from now nobody conversant with his country's history 
will need to ask who Senator Quay was, while there will 
be none who can give the name of any one of the 
political Pharisees who are his traducers, fluttering now 
so aimlessly in their newly pressed swallow-tails and 
chokers, like aerate full of excited black-birds disturbed 
over the dire prospect of an eagle sweeping down upon 
them, and inflicting what to their distorted little brains 
seems like indescribable horrors. 



Pharisee an J Witch-Burner in Modern Politics. 39 



CHAPTER IX, 

A QUESTION OF PEOPLE'S RIGHTS. 

T ; iat the influence of the political Pharisee is detrimen- 
tal t > the p )litics of a community, that one of the direct 
cts of his acts is to fetter the hands of a political 

janization in its reaching out for proper men for office 
and for better methods in politics, must be obvious to all 
who observe his conduct and note the obstinate trait in 
his character which refuses to be satisfied with anything 
that comes from the Republican leaders, w r hether it be a 
candidate or a measure of legislation, regardless of the 
essential question of their merits. 

It must be remembered that in dealing with him we are 
not discussing a being possessed of the faculty of reason- 
ing impartially, but are treating of a one-sided and often- 
times bloodless species of man who may be most fitly 
described, not as a person, but as an organism. He is 
here among us, — a factor, at present, in our politics, — an 
element of discord outside the lines of party organization. 
Elevate him to office, elect him to the Legislature or to 
Congress, or place him in any position where he shall be 
able, if he chooses, to command and distribute official 
patrona 

In such position, what may we reasonably assert shall 
be the experience of the party man or of the party 
worker who may seek him out and request his aid toward 
obtaining a place in government employ to the end that 
he may gain a livelihood for himself and his family. 



40 Pharisee and Witch- Burner in Modern Polities. 

It requires no extensive effort of the imagination to 
see the Pharisee draw himself up with superb dignity 
contract himself with sudden frigidity of manner, and in- 
form the seeker after position, with scant ceremony, that 
he has not been elected to public position to find offi< 
for people. 

No. lie has not been elected to office for that purpo 
but holding official position, as hi a public 

man and must expect applications to him from peo] 
irrespective of "creed, color or condition," for aid in 
various directions. 

His answer to the seeker after plage, howe\ 
scribes a trait in his character in the p on of which 

he prides himself as much, perhaps, as in any th.it are 
among his characteristics, lie is not in the habit 
boasting, but he will tell his friends with much mo< 
relish, in the recollection of the high ground I 
how his privacy was invaded and his 

offended by a visit from a "fellow" who « the 

Pharisaic official to find him a situation because he had 
worked and voted for him. I lis friends, in their social 
gatherings, where such experiences are usually retailed, 
sympathize with him and express regret that his sacred 
person should have been threatened with con tarn inat 
through possible contact with a being such as the "politi- 
cal fellow " who sought an appointment. 

The satisfaction of the Pharisee and his friends might 
be something we could sympathize with if it were the 
whole story and did not have the uncomfortable possibil- 
ity of possessing another side. There is the not remote 



Pharisee and Witch- Burner in Modern Politics. 41 

likelihood, however, that the man who applied for position 
may be miserably poor and wretched, with a wife and 
children dependent upon him and with no bread in the 
house for their hungry mouths ; with no fire or fuel in 
the house to warm their shivering bodies ; with no warm 
clothing on their backs ; with no shoes for their feet and 
without the means to pay for the barest and meanest of 
the necessaries of life. 

And the wife and children must go cold and hungry, 
the husband and father must go about a wanderer, weary, 
disheartened and haggard, because of the high ground 
assumed by the Pharisaic office-holder! 

■ It is one of the invariable rules of the theorist and 
tnoralist to condemn the workers in a political party, the 
army of active men in an organization, for their part in 
aiding and advancing the success of leaders whom the 
theorist himself considers the embodiment of all that is 
bad in party politics, according to the information he has 
received, mainly through partisan and prejudiced chan- 

It might not be out of place to ask him, in view of his 
belief in the direction mentioned, if he has ever taken 
time to deliberate over the position occupied by the plain, 
common people of this Republic, with reference to their 
relations toward the leaders of their political organiza- 
tions and the officers of the town, city, county, State and 
:onal governments. His consideration of the matter 
will doubtless remind him that the government under 
which he lives rests, not on tradition or precedent, but on 
the suffrages, on the will of the citizens, who are para- 



42 Pharisee and Witch-Burner in .' Politics. 

mount in the exercise of the primary power. The men 
they elect to public position arc their servant* . n by 

the decision of the majority to do the work n< 
for the operation of the government under the Constitu- 
tion and the laws. 

The relation between master ai 
it is, shall any i lit and the ; 

of the citizen, whether he be a worker in a party or 
to go to the political leader or to tii 
seek a place in th< or Nati 

government ny that he po 

would be to deny that his country 

in name. To accept the doctrine of the Phari I the 

theorist is to curtail the citizen of the privilege h 
of free and unobstructed a 

tives, and to create an arist ling th.it 

would be at variance with one of the cardinal princi 
of the American political system, — rotation in 

If the Pharisee complains that men of his kind are 
not elected to office, that they are not i and 

honorable political positions, his complaint, all the t 
being considered, carries with it th innatior. 

himself and his class. The plain cit >f the land, 

jealous of the preservation of their rights, will not trust 
him nor them. The narrowness of his mind, his c 
tracted beliefs, his want of judgment of men, his o\ 
estimate of his own importance, the petty motives which 
govern his political acts, — all combine to make him, in 
the eyes of the people, an undesirable person to have in 
charge of public affairs. 






Pharisee and Witch-Burner in Modern Politics. 43 



The folly of the claim which he makes, that public 
officers should not be applied to by persons seeking 
positions, that they should be placed far above the reach 
of influences which might serve to govern them in the 
matter of making appointments, seems to demand some 
special notice. A survey of the entire question, involving 
in the process a contrast between the American party 
man and the people of foreign countries in the relation 
they bear toward their governmental leaders, will show 
how happy is the condition of the people of this Republic 
in the possession of the very rights which the Pharisee 
condemns. No barrier is thrown across the way of the 
American citizen, however humble, when he seeks admit- 
tance to the presence of the American official, however 
great. 

How happy, how thrice blessed, would the Russian 
peasant consider himself did he enjoy the same privileges 
in his own land ! How rich, how complete would be the 
sum of his delight if he could gain access to the officers 
of the government under which he lives as easily as the 
humblest American can approach the governmental heads 
of this Republic. 

The "high ground" about which the political Pharisee 
has so much to say, means the placing of the business of 
government and of office-getting far beyond the reach of 
the masses of the citizens; means the meeting of a select 
few persons in secret conference, in parlor or private club 
room, for the purpose of choosing the men they would 
have in office, regardless of the wishes of the people. 
If an injustice is done the Pharisee in this assertion, we 



44 Pharisee and Witch-Burner in Modern Politics. 

are not aware of it, and feel assured that no one conver- 
sant with recent political history in Philadelphia is aware 
of it. There does not seem to be any way in which he 
can explain or excuse the secret conferences and open 
promulgations which have been the result of them, and 
which are now part of Philadelphia's political history. 
If such conferences and promulgations do not place the 
Pharisee in the position of being desirous of curtail- 
ing the constitutional political rights of the people, tl 
can be no meaning in words and no evidence in the 
existence of undisputed facts. 



Pharisee and Witch-Burner in Modern Politics. 45 



CHAPTER X. 

SOME PHARISAIC INCONSISTENCIES. 

It has been shown that the Pharisaic personage in 
politics has one invariable claim which he parades con- 
spicuously, which is the regulation badge of his profes- 
sion, — he is " a Republican," never a Democrat. 

Yet the common sense of men will readily perceive 
through the halo of his righteous profession the unques- 
tioned fact of his destination politically; will easily dis- 
cern the political faith of the party and of the candidates 
whose cause he espouses and who are the undoubted 
beneficiaries of his devoted and self-sacrificing work. If 
there is an instance on record, since the appearance of 
this anomaly in modern politics, of the operation of his 
hostility against any organization save the one which he 
professes to be a member of, and which he avows so 
much devotion for, it is not within the universal knowledge 
of men any more than it is within the consciousness of the 
party which receives the benefit of his disaffection and 
which, by a skillful play upon his vanity and self-import- 
ance, uses him for the promotion and advancement of its 
own ends while it secretly makes sport of his weakness 
and despises the assumption of his motives. 

Professing to abhor that party, to loathe its doctrines 
and the character of the masses of its followers, he is ever 
on hand at the beginning of a political canvass to issue 
his addresses and pamphlets in favor of its candidates, and 



46 Pharisee and Witch- Burner in Modern Politics. 

against the nominees of the organization he pretends to 
love so much even though they may have been taken 
from the ranks of the most trusted and most useful of 
reform committees ; nay, may have been taken from the 
very reform body of which the Pharisee himself is a mem- 
ber, as was the case when the Republican party of Phila- 
delphia nominated for City Treasurer, I D. 
McCrcary, of the old Committee of One Hundred, — ,i 
man noted for innumerable public 1 and charit. 
acts, and one who had sacrificed tin >nal 
comfort in order that the politics of his city might be 
purified and proper men selected for public offi 

There was at once the breaking away of old reform 
friends, the hurrying of old reform co-workers and fresh 
recruits, whose names were unknown to reform labor as 
well as to local fame, to secret conf 

and formulate and promulgate, not in the int( this 

sincere and earnest reformer, whose unselfish work of 
years was known to them so well, but for the benefit of 
the Democratic candidate* The man with whom they 

*A review of some of the more conspicuous of the mistak- ^iave 

been made by Herbert Welsh's Independent committee, working in the 
interest of the Democratic candidate for City Treasurer, may not be un- 
timely. They are as follows : — 

" Herbert Welsh sent a letter to his brother member of the Citi/ens , Com- 
mittee of Fi r ty, William H. Rhawn, asking him for a contribution to help 
elect Mr. Wright, and Mr. Rhawn wrote a sharp letter back, stating that 
he was opposed to Mr. Wright and would do all he could for Mr. McCrearv. 
A spirited controversy arose between the two Independents, in the course 
of which Mr. Rhawn told Mr. Welsh that the latter belonged to the Demo- 
cratic party anyhow and not to the Republican party. 



Pharisee and Witch- Burner in Modern Politics. 47 

had stood shoulder to shoulder in waging timely and 
well-fought battles against official venality and corrup- 
tion, whose purse was ever open to them when the need 
of means to prosecute fraud and expose crime threatened 
to impede their praise-worthy efforts, had lived to see the 
leaders of his party bow in submission to the justice of 

*' Herbert Welsh sent a letter to George Watson, of the old Committee of 
One Hundred, asking for a contribution for Mr. Wright, and Mr. Watson 
wrote back r< fusing him, and saying he was for McCreary, and that the 
position of Mr. Welsh and other * Independents ' in antagonizing such a 
good man am a zed him. 

u Herbert Welsh sent a letter to William Potter, of the old Committee of 
One Hundred, asking for a contribution for Mr. Wright, and Mr. Totter 
wrote tack refusing, and saying he would do all he could to help elect 
George D. McCreary, ' the kind of man the reformers had sought to have 
nominated for public office for years.' 

" Herbert Welsh sent a letter to John C. Watt, of the old Committee of 
One Hundred, asking for a contribution for Mr. Wright, and Mr. Watt 
refused and said his money and efforts should go to help elect George D. 
McCreary. 

" Herbert Welsh sent a letter to L. G. Fouse, one of the staunchest and 
most uncompromising independents and reformers in Philadelphia, asking 
for a contribution for Mr. Wright, and Mr. Fouse wrote back, scoring Mr. 
Welsh and his committee for opposing Mr. McCreary, * the kind of nomi- 
nee the reformers have desired ever since the reform movement K 

" Herbert Welsh sent a letter to W. Durell Shuster, a well known inde- 
pendent business man, asking for a contribution for Mr. Wright, and Mr. 
ler wrote back a scathing letter, sa\ing his money and efforts should 
go to help George D. McCreary. 

" Herbert Welsh sent a letter to William C. Hannis, one of the best 
known Independents in the city, asking for a contribute n for Mr. Wright, 
and Mr. Hannis came out and announced that he did n ': . Wright, 

but that he considered the cause of re: y the 

election of George L>. McCreary.'' — Phila. Press, Oct. 2j, iSyi. 



48 Pharisee and Witch-Burner in Modern Polities. 

his and their pains-taking and laborious work ; had lived 
to see them come before him in subdued spirit and abso- 
lute self-denial and say in effect: "Our party is your 
party. It has been purged by you and yours and we are 
content, for your interest was the interest of the people 
and without the people the party must fail. We have O 
to you in peace and concord to ask you, as the repre- 
sentatives of the great party which you have purified, to 
consent to accept the position of Treasurer of the City, 
knowing the people's welfare, and hence the party's wel- 
fare, will be promoted by your f this trust. 
We respectfully await your answer and in the name of 
our common party we ask you to not say n»»." 

There was the triumph of men over methods, the 
triumph of principle over pretense. If the object of this 
remarkable solicitation loved the principles of his party, 
what course was left open to him in the presence of the 
proposition sent him by the unanimous voice of that 
party? If he had ever harbored in his mind a just and 
reasonable determination to battle against the methods of 
his party so long as it should oppose a reform, what re- 
mained for him to do after it had yielded completely, and 
as a token of the sincerity of its new and better awaken- 
ing had besought him to aid it in its higher counsel by 
consenting to occupy in its name one of the most im- 
portant and responsible of the trusts reposing within the 
gift of the people ? 

Did he, being a sincere reformer and a lover of the 
principles of the party, whose methods alone he had 
formerly objected to, dare refuse the offer under the cir- 



Pharisee and Witch-Burner in Modern Politics. 49 

cumstances ? That it was not convenient for him to accept 
any public office, that the idea of holding public position 
was not in harmony with his tastes and his habits, were 
considerations entitled to weight and influence if their 
operation was confined to persons indifferent on the 
question of politics or of the principles of a party. 
Applied to the case of a conscientious man, a public- 
spirited man, a true lover of the principles and of the 
past achievements of the political garty to which he 
belonged, zealous for its welfare, possessed of motives 
entirely disinterested, what should the common sense and 
the reason of the average citizen expect his answer 
would be when his party, in submissive and yielding 
spirit, acknowledged that he was right and asked him to 
help guide it according to his wholesome beliefs and 
sound judgment ? 

He would have forfeited the right to the confidence and 
respect of his fellow Republicans had he refused, and 
have raised in their minds forever a doubt as to the 
sincerity of the motives actuating him in his past reform 
work. He would have proved by his act, before the e 
of all unprejudiced men, that lie was not a lover of the 
organization in which he professed to hold membership; 
that he was, at heart, a sympathizer and well-wisher of 
the opposition party, though wearing the garb of a 
Republican. 

He did the thing which involved the greatest self- 
sacrifice when he consented to stand as the candidate of 
his party for the office of City Treasurer. 1 le tinned his 
back upon the easier and more comfortable course and 



50 Pharisee and Witch- Bur tier in Modern Politics. 

accepted the least pleasant and most difficult. It might 
be supposed, to the credit of human nature and to the 
encouragement of true reform in the future, that this 
shining member of their own band having been sin-led 
out for responsible and important public position where 
his influence and his work would be still more useful in 
elevating the political standards of his party, the old 
associates of the nominee would rally around him with 
words of praise and gladness and lighten the burden of 
the sacrifice lie had already made by carrying him 
joyously and enthusiastically to the official chair, the 
tender of which was such a complete ami absolute vindi- 
cation of the justness of their worthy and long-applied 
efforts. 

Instead of a spectacle such as we might have b 
prone to imagine, the reality presented a somewhat 
different picture. The existing organization, "The Citi. 
Committee of Fifty for a New Philadelphi; divided 

on the question of its support between Mr. McCreary, the 
Reform Republican, and Mr. Wright, the Democratic 
nominee. Not satisfied, however, witli a divided organi- 
zation, the Pharisaic portion of it, led by a zealot, wh 
inherited wealth made him a personage of importance 
among men who attach weight to the possession of 
riches, went outside the organization and formed a new- 
committee "for the election of the Democratic candidate 
for City Treasurer." 

It may be as well to observe that the promoter of this 
new order, while professing loudly — in type-written in 
views, which found their way in some singular manner to 



Pharisee and Witch-Burner in Modern Politics. 



5* 



the newspaper offices, and in solemn addresses issued to 
the public, — to be "a Republican" desirous of "reform 
within the party," was unknown in the sphere of municipal 
reform in the discouraging days prior to the clearance 
of the political atmosphere by George McCreary and his 
associates. Coming upon the scene as a latter-day re- 
former and inspired by an overwhelming love of notoriety, 
he at once jostled aside old and tried workers and leaders, 
and as the head of various committees and sub-committees 
into which he quickly forced himself, began to launch 
addresses, appeals, pronunciamentos and solemn promul- 
gations upon the public, always as " a Republican." 

On one hand he had his new organization for the 
defeat of McCreary and the promotion of Democratic 
success ; on the other, a second organization for the 
lethronement of Senator Quay, more than a year hence, 
)v the defeat of future candidates for the legislature, to 
the end that such future candidates may not have the 
opportunity to sit in the assembly chamber and vote for 
the Senator's return to the United States Senate; and still 
further, he had his reforming interests in the Committee 
}f Fifty to maintain. 

It is to the credit of true reform that the " Committee 
rf Fifty " should have had members in its ranks who 
refused to espouse the cause of the Democratic candidate 
md of his party.* It is to the credit of human nature 



*" Your esteemed favor of the 15th inst. duly received. In my letter of 
he 7th inst., replying to yours of the 20th ult., I sought no controversy, but 
nerely desired to explain to you why I could not unite with you and other 



5 2 Pharisee and Witch- Burner in Modern Politics. 

and to the common-sense of men as well as a solace to 
the sense of wrong and injustice, which right-minded 
persons feel in the presence of things done for the pre- 
tended good of their fellow beings, under the mask that 
veils hypocrisy, bigotry, uncharitabl ' : >ort, 

envy, jealousy and malice, that these men uttered ringing 
words of protest against the revelation of fanaticism and 
two-fold motives governing the Pharisees with whom 

gentlemen in the endorsement of the Democratic candidate 

urer, to which you invited me. You fail to show that your honest I 'en 

would be any less under the influence of the leaders of his party than the 

honest Republican would be under the lcad< 

knowledge of human nature could for a moment believe that either would be 

absolutely uninfluenced by all party coi r. An entirely 

non-partisan candidate is, at this time, an impossibility. Therefore, the 

difference between us is simply that you are more willing to trust your 

honest man with the leaders of the Democratic party, where, pci I 

now really belong, while I prefer to trust my honest man with the lea 

of the Republican party. If it is merely a choice between the Republican 

machine and the Democratic machine, you will have to convir, 

you seem to have convinced yourself and others with you, that the latt 

the better of the two, as I do not believe it. 

" Your reference to the Committee of Fifty I think an unfortunate one 
for you. 

"While the question of the endorsement of the two candidates for the 
office of City Treasurer was already in the hands of the committee for con- 
sideration, you and other members circulated your letter of endorsement 
among its members and others as a confidential communication, thei 
covertly seeking to forestall the action of the committee by manufacturing a 
sentiment within and without the committee in favor of the Democratic 
candidate through said communication, which you having expressly 
quested should be held as confidential, could not be openly discussed and 
answered or even disclosed by gentlemen until you saw fit to make it public. 

"This appears to me to place you in the position of taking an unfair ad- 



Pharisee and Witch-Burner in Modern Pali:. ^^ 

they found themselves leagued. Their eyes were soon 
opened to the fact that their Pharisaic brothers, who 
ed themselves individually " a Republican," were in 
reality persons who had rejected Republican candid 
for no less office than the Presidency, aiding the Demo- 
cratic cause in some instances by voting the Democratic 
ticket direct, and-in other cases by voting for the candidate 
of the Prohibitionists.* 



vantage of the Republican candidate and of those members of the committee 
who favored his candidacy. After the matter had been brought up in the 
Committee of Fifty and had been referred to its Executive Committee for 
consideration and report, such action upon the part of the members of the 
committee appears to me indefensible, as thereafter any harmonious action 
e committee in behalf of either candidate became impossible." — Wm. 
H. I nmittee of Fifty* to Heri I —Pkila. 

tin* October igth, i 

*" I congratulate the Republican party upon your nomination for the office 
of City Treasurer, and sincerely hope that the choice may be ratified by the 
people. The attitude of the Independent Republicans amazes me. If 
d succeed, then what hope is there for reform in the party, which- 
ever party it be? It seems to me simply the part of patriotism, when the 
dominant party nominates a gentleman who has the unbounded confidence 
of the peoj le. to put the seal of public approbation upon i's choice. What 
have Independent Republicans been in>istin£i ? Has it not 

been the selection of nominees by the peoj le and nut by the "boss 
And now, when their cry has been heeded, they turn ag r party to 

rend it. 

" I have a> ever been < a! in the 

work of po'itical re r orm. I fa en a fee lance in 

politic?, that is >o far as my vote is concer n ed, -onal 

at stake. 

" I hope e elected by such a : 

to the goo 1 of the people is the kt_ unicipal patriotism." — / 

from Rr.. Dr. William Swindell* to George D. . . PhilaJi. 

Star, Oct. iq, i8gi. 



54 Pharisee and Witch- Burner in Modern Politics. 

They discovered likewise that the uncompromising 
disaffection of the majority of the Pharis< \s due to 

their disbelief in the efficacy of the Republican doctrine 
that maintains a tariff on imported foreign products. 
Some of the Pharisaic advocates of the Democratic 
nominee were engaged in the mercantile line and felt 
that they had to pay too much duty on hosiery and 
woolens; others were in the business of importing 
groceries, and still others were off i marine 

insurance companies whose trade was enhanced in 
proportion with the increase in the shipment to this 
country of foreign cargoes, and all w *ons wh 

individual pecuniar}- interests would I by 

the success of the Democratic party with its policy of 
free trade. 

We have not spoken of the inter nal 

element attached to the Pharisaic train, — of the young 
lawyer with his eye shrewdly on the main char. 
ready to catch a new client among the worthy busin 
men ; ever on the alert to " get business " out of the m 
mature of the mutually admiring group. The thrifty 
lawyer and insurance man — and perhaps the 
man — are equally desirous of serving on committees, and 
they will not mind taking a chairmanship or two, particu- 
larly if it gives them notoriety, places their names in the 
newspapers, and above all brings them into clo 
with those wealthy business men of the Pharisaic order 
who, mayhap, will employ them outside the hours of the 
reform conference, to look after odds and ends of business 



Pharisee and Witch- Burner in Modern Politics. 55 

and do work not especially relished by the old family 
legal adviser or conveyancer. 

The interested professional ones in the group may be 
mentioned as possessing one striking characteristic. They 
are all particularly defamatory and vindictive in their 
speech against prominent Republican leaders. They 
find it is a popular thing to talk against Quay, and they 
mention the name of that much abused Senator so 
often with venom and dispraise that an observant physi- 
ognomist might discern a slight change in the form of 
their mouths due to the constant use of gutterals in the 
expression of their disgust and hatred of the man whom 
it is so popular to hate and abuse. 

Xor is it strange that it should be popular among this 
class, for without that Republican leader there would 
have been no Republican President, and no tariff to 
plague and fret "a Republican," with his business profits 
depending on the maintenance of his foreign marine 
insurance business ; on his ability to import his hosiery 
and "woolens and groceries free of duty. Let the Phari- 
saic camp therefore resound with defamation against 
Quay and Quayism ; let the young lawyer and the real 
estate man and the keen-eyed insurance man vie with 
each other in spreading evil report against this hated 
man, for it is very popular among their patrons, as sweet 
music to their ears, and the great masses of the people 
who know not their motives any more than they know 
their characters — save through the medium of their truly 
good addresses beginning with 4t we, the undersigned 
Republicans" — will be duly impressed by their zeal and 



5 6 Pharisee and Witch-Burner in Modern Politics. 

the quality of their denunciation of the late chairman of 
the Republican National Committee, whose political 
generalship made such bad, not to say keenly dis- 
appointed prophets of them in the presidential campaign 
of 1888. 



Pharisee and Witch- Burner in Modern Politics. 57 



CHAPTER XL 

THE PHARISEE VERSUS LABOR. 

The honorable and intellectual business of pleading 
the law has been from time unreckoned an avocation 
subject to the criticism of men, to slight remark, to the 
indulgence of the propensity of mankind to jest and make 
display of small wit, regardless of the question of the 
extent of experience or of knowledge the critics may 
possess of the profession they defame and against which 
they so readily affect a willingness to bear evil report. 
This prejudice against a calling as old almost as social 
government itself, is illustrated in the present day by the 
existence of a clause in the constitution of the greatest 
workingmen's organization perhaps that America has 
ever known, the Knights of Labor, which proscribes law- 
yers from fellowship in the order, a curious instance of 
the practical application of the bias in the judgment of 
men, that obtains among those who labor with their hands 
against a class of citizens, more or less learned, who are 
part of the remaining numbers of the human family who 
rely for subsistence upon the work of their heads. 

It is possible, if these same Knights of Labor could 
hear, in moments of freedom of mind and disinterested 
attention, the bitter complaints of many of the youngcr 
and of the less successful members of the learned profes- 
sion which they appear to discountenance, to the effect 
that " the trust companies with their title insurance and 



58 Pharisee and Witch- Burner in Modern Politics, 

conveyancing departments have ruined the law business" 
they would experience a change in the view, or at least 
a modification of the feeling they now entertain toward 
lawyers as a cla 

The evidence of the ability of many of the learned 
members of the labor-order-proscribed calling to adapt 
means to ends, however, is shown with striking conclu- 
siveness by the eagerness with which they betake them- 
selves to the " conference of our best citizens to devise 
ways and means to reform our part It might be 

uncharitable to suggest that among those who respond 
to the call for such affairs there is usually to be found an 
element in the legal talent represented which h 
unsuccessful in finding satisfaction forits | J ambi- 

tions and political aspirations in any party, and their: 
readily assents to the proposition that the party which 
is most powerful and which could most easily have 
bestowed its favors upon it is in need of reforming. 

The motive which actuates men, however, is not always 
clear to the disinterested spectator, and when solemn and 
almost lugubrious addresses are issued " to the citizen- " 
assailing or arraigning a party or a party's leaders or both, 
with an appeal to those citizens to note the array of 
respectable names which support the address, the respect- 
ability may be more observable than the motive which 
•prompts the signature. The citizen is vise, therefore, 
who refrains from accepting the invitation or the advice 
embodied in the address until he shall have deliberated 
and taken time to inquire into the possible motives of those 
who do him the honor to seek his co-operation in their 






Pharisee ana* Witch-Burner in Modern Politics, 59 

grandly pictured work. He may not allow himself to be 
influenced solely by the claim that the names of the 
signers are eminently respectable, for respectable men 
have been known once or twice in the world's history to 
be insincere, one-sided, narrow, prejudiced, selfish, im- 
practicable, uncharitable and to be guilty likewise — 
always for the good of the object they seek — of prevari- 
cation. There is no evidence that the man Dives, of 
Scriptural mention, was anything other than respectable, 
and it is possible that while he slighted the beggar at 
his door he may have been noted for his donations to, 
and his grave concern for, the welfare of the Indians or 
equivalent tribes in the remote dominions of his country. 

If we may recur to that pamphlet heretofore alluded 
to, " an address to the citizens of Pennsylvania." pro- 
mulgated against the Republican party and United States 
Senator Quay by certain gentlemen in Philadelphia, and 
in a few counties outside, who preface their address with 
" We, the undersigned Republicans," it will not be un- 
timely to say that of the 322 signatures which the pro- 
moters of the address succeeded in obtaining, up to 
September, 1891, after nearly a year's work, thirty-three 
of them are lawyers, — a proportion of 1 more than ten per 
cent, of members of a single profession on a list, where 
the followers of all vocations and pursuit-, save that of 
laboring with the bands, are supposed to be represented. 

That the labor people are unrepresented on the address 
is not surprising since the fact of the preponderance of 
representation of the legal profession is sufficient, if 
there were no other reason, to cause them to look 



60 Pharisee and Witch-Burner in Modern Politics. 

upon the motives which inspire the movement with 
proper suspicion. If the lawyer is excluded from the 
noted labor organization and readily admitted to the 
Pharisaic political committee, it may be in order to 
observe that the fundamental beliefs and aims of the two 
bodies are radically different, not to say wholly ant,, 
nistic. 

The latter body seeks to build up a political clement 
that will reform the party it claims to love, but which it 
will, for the present, sacrifice, by using the material w 1 
has been rejected by the former, as m important part of 
the composition which enters into its structure. 

With its array of three hundred and twenty-two nam 
thirty-three of them being lawyers, it appeals to the 
citizens of a State in which exist more assemblies of the 
gigantic labor order, that will have nothing to do with 
lawyers, than is to be found in any other State in the 
Union, and asks them to join with it in a new political 
reformation. 

The intelligence of unprejudiced men, whether, they 
labor with their hands or with their heads, will see the 
ridiculous aspect of the movement and note the insincer- 
ity and inconsistency of its professions as well as the 
impracticability of its aims. 

The men engaged in it may be truly good, in the 
sense of the child who knows no wrong, and may believe 
with ready credence all the defamation and slander borne 
upon the poisonous political winds to the alert sense of 
their waiting and horrified ears. They may likewise 
possess a simply human love of publicity, in the indul- 



Pharisee and Witch-Burner in Modern Politics. 



61 



gencc of which they will not stop, good and righteous 
as they are, to promote the circulation (A' the slander or 
to swell the tide of villification against men whom they 
have never seen but against whom their enmity, fed by 
hear-say reports, has burned almost to madness. 

Professing a desire to reform politics and to promote the 
community's political morals, they furnish for their day 
and generation examples of a license in denunciatory 
speech, of a freedom in reckless personalities, and of a 
disposition for bigotry, uncharitableness and intolerance 
that may well cause the philosophic observer to pause 
and consider whether the process that evolves the highly 
developed type of man who, in his transcendental state 
of perfection becomes too good to remain in any political 
party, is a prodigious benefit to humanity or not. 



62 Pharisee and Witch- Burner in Modern Politics, 



CHAPTER XII. 

A QUESTION OF STATE PRIDE AND PATRIOTISM. 

THE desire of men to stand well before tin- eyes of the 
world IS among the first and str< of the natural 

instincts. A just pride of character is alway 

and when sueh pride includes likewise a du< I for 

all things belonging to or connected with the per 
whether sueh things he worldly possessions, rclati 

Friends or place of habitation, mankind will instantly 
re Ognize one of the most stable and useful members of 
the social order. 

When the pride of the citizen in the matter of his place 
of habitation, in his country and in its institution . 
strongly developed men say he is patriotic; and what 
his faults and failings may be his unselfish love of country 
shines as the great redeeming quality of his nature. 
Posterity will forgive his foibles if he is patriotic, and 
history will know him only as an example for the sons 
of the nation to emulate. That his patriotism has taught 
him to guard and defend the good name of his country 
or of his State may be assumed without question, as 
otherwise he would not be possessed of the grand quality 
which causes nations and governments to be remembered 
and the names of men to be revered. In the length and 
breadth of the American Union, where is the man to be 
found who does not respect the feeling which we know 
and define as " State pride.'* The pride of a people in 



Pharisee and Witch-Burner in Modern PoHt 6$ 

their State commands the respect and the admiration of 
persons residing outside its borders as it docs those 
of people of foreign countries. We may be allowed 
to present several instances of the existence of the 
wholesome quality in American citizens by recalling 
recent noteworthy acts on the part of the people of 
Delaware — the first of the original thirteen colonies to 
enter the sisterhood of States. In the late celebration 
of the centennial of the adoption of the federal con- 
stitution, held in New York City, in which the Gover- 
nors of the first thirteen colonies were the leading par- 
ticipants, it was proposed, without a suspicion or thought 
of opposition, that the representative of the State which 
is the largest center of population and wealth should 
head the column in the grand procession. To the sur- 
prise of everybody and to the amusement of some at 
first, the Governor of Delaware, the next smallest State in 
the Union, the Hon. B. T. Biggs, arose and in fit and 
proper address, having paid due honor to New York as 
the largest of the States in population and riches, reminded 
the assembled Governors of the precedence held by Del- 
aware in the formation of the Union. The assertion of 
patriotism and proper State pride on the part of Governor 
Biggs had its effect and the State next to the smallest in 
territory of those in the Union was represented at the 
head of the line in the grand pageant of States as it 
moved before the eyes of the assembled millions in the 
American metropolis. 

gain, it is a matter of recent knowledge that when an 
enterprising American, prompted by a speculative spirit, 






64 Pharisee and Witch-Burner in Modern Politics. 

sought to obtain possession of one of the ancient whip- 
ping-posts of Delaware for the purpose of conducting a 
profitable exhibition for the satisfaction of the morbid 
curiosity of the prospectively assembled millions at the 
coming World's Fair at Chi -'ate pride and the 

self-respect of the people arose at once and when the 
morning came, succeeding a certain eventful night, the 
whipping-post that was to have been held up before the 
gaze of a vulgar world as Delaware's mode of punishing 
her culprits, had been chopped into | ng it 

necessary for the original-minded showman to abandon 
the idea of obtaining possession of that particular "at- 
traction." 

It may be* accepted as a safe assertion that citi/c 
possessed of so much patriotism and deep-rooted pride 
as those of the State of the Bayards, the B , the 

Salisburys, the Greens, the Rosses, tin- Cochrans, the 
Gilpins, the Higgins, the Comegys, the M the 

Stockleys and the Naudains, would not permit an element 
of its citizens, whether banded together as Reformers 
in politics or as Independents issuing add to "the 

voters of the State" against its public men, to import a 
band of libelers and reckless detainers of its sons, regard- 
less of the question of the political party to which they 
belonged, and turn them loose like hungry jackals to 
disgrace the State and the residents within its boundaries 
by the miasma of their noisome trail and the unwhole- 
some effects upon the peace of mind and self-respect 
of a community of their unclean presence. 

Between the State of Delaware and the State of Penn- 



Pharisee and Witch-Burner in Modern Potit 65 

sylvania what a contrast is presented ! The men who 
prate most about the u lost honor of Pennsylvania " 
the men who disgrace and defame her. They who pro- 
fess so much solicitude for her good name are the ones 
who furnished the material to the hostile press of a rival 
State to blacken her record and belittle her achievements 
before the eyes of her sister States. 

When we reflect that the Pharisaic band which affects 
such high ground and such pure ideals in politics a in- 
sists of the men who, in the formation of one of their 
recent " Reform Committees " adopted by a unanimous 
vote as one of their fundamental doctrines, a provision in 
their constitution against the introduction of electric 1 
in Philadelphia, the idea is apt to suggest itself that the 
community would perhaps hear without impatience any 
proposition contemplating the erection of a principality 
or of a State where they could form a government and live 
a life in accordance with their own ideas, unmolested by 
practical men and shunned by all who despise the libeller, 
the villifier and the exemplar of hypocricy and false 
pretence. 

The citizens of Pennsylvania who are patriotic and 
who have a reasonable pride in their State, will perhaps 
be reluctant to agree with our Pharisaic mourners on the 
question of the all< [eneracy of the State's power 

md importance. They will doubtless view the matter in 
le light of cold reason and common in 

le position of Pennsylvania to-day, one of the p 
sras she has ever enjoyed in her history; will see her 
represented in the most important position in the Nation, il 



66 Pharisee and Witch-Burner in Modern Politics. 

Cabinet — the position which has dealings directly with 
the seventy million people of the land, the Postmaster 
Generalship — by a gentleman born and reared in the 
chief city cf the State, and taken from the walks of busy 
mercantile life, the wisdom of whose appointment has 
been justified by the immense improvement and ( 
ment of the Postal Service under his practical and un- 
tiring hands. In the presence of the undoubted results 
of Postmaster General Wanamaker's work, the Pharisaic 
lamentations surely cannot receive encouragement The 
honor of the State of Pennsylvania seems to be as bright 
in its possession of this shining member of the National 
Cabinet as it ever has been in its history. 

The State has likewise th nd Comptroller of the 

Treasury, Colonel B. F. Gilkeson, who, it will perhaps be 
well to remind the weeping but defamatory Pilaris 
amply maintains the honor of Pennsylvania at the 
National Capitol. Nor must it be I n that the 

State whose " honor " and- " importance " have been so 
sadly obscured, has the satisfaction of seeing another of 
her sons in the responsible office of Commissioner of 
Customs, in Mr. Holliday, of Erie, a position which, 
perhaps, from a Pharisaic standpoint, does not count, 
since those composing the delectable band of libel 
of their State would prefer to see all customs duties 
abolished and foreign goods admitted free in accordance 
with the doctrines of their real political apostle, Mr. 
Cleveland. 

A consideration of the situation in connection with 
foreign missions, will also be likely to give the citizen 



Pharisee and Witch-Burner, in 

of Pennsylvania an idea or two about the s 

condition of his State's honor that he will n 
by reading the Pharisaic pamphlet "against 
and Quayism " or the u address to v 

nia." He will find one of the most important C< 

Europe, that of St. Petersburg, effulgent with the \ 

of a brilliant son of Pennsylvania, Mr. C 

Smith. His eyes may next wander to 

where they will observe another celebrated Pennsylva- 

nian in the person of Colonel A. Loudon Snowden, who, 

like Minister Smith, abundantly exemplifies the 1 

the State which the Pharisaic element ami 

takes such unaccountable pleasure in malign; I 

The honor of Pennsylvania seems, in view of sub- 
stantial facts, quite well maintained under the ; 
Republican administration, made possible 1 
Quay and other able party leaders. The list of dis- 
tinguished places occupied by its sous might be enlar 
were it worth the while. For example, mention mi 
be made of the fact that an eminent citizen of Philadel- 
phia, Mr. James H. Windrim, graced the r 
office of Supervising Architect of the Treasury 1 1 
ment until he resigned the post I A an important 

appointment under the Mayor of Philadelphia, Mr. 
Stuart. 

These facts will doubtless ii; 
u the voters of Pennsylvania " when the Pharisaic h 
appeals to them to adopt their I ith 

them in their work. It may be hat 



68 Pharisee and Witch-Burner in Modern Politics. 

the honor of the State will find defenders, once the 
defaming " Provisional Committee: tdeil 

the scope of its work and reveals itself to the coun 
voters in its true color, which should be unmistaka 
black, emblem; tic of the aims of its call: inst the 

white record of the State and against the fame of 
public men. 



Pharisee and Witch- Burner in Modern i 69 



CHAPTER XIII. 

THE CROMWELUAN ADJUN 

L\ one respect in particular the political Pharisee may 

be considered fortunate in the pursuit of 1. 
While an earnest and practical world, absorbed in the 
business of working out its destiny, may be too much 
preoccupied to listen to his grievances as poured forth 
in doleful monotone in counting-room or sidewalk, on 
crowded thoroughfare, or as represented in 
worded circulars or pamphlets ad I b 1 " the v< >t< 

he invariably has recourse to at least one sympathetic 
editor who will take up his case and make common 
cause with him against the common enemy. 

If the editor himself is a person of witch-burning 
propensities, he is more than likely to be radical in his 
ideas, in his desires, and in his interpretation of the di 
divinely imposed upon him and which constitute his 
"mission." Me excels even the Pharisee himself in his 
zeal to take from Providence the mishing the 

unworthy and the wicked, lest th< hall not 

feel the full extent of the 

he gets started in the witch-burning movement, the 
righteous anger and impatience of 1 
burn in his heart are easil; able in all his 

utterances, whetlu r written, on tl 

of the hated object of hi 
appointed undertal reform til 



70 Pharisee and Witch- Burner in Modern Politics. 

politics, the suggestion of a resemblance to the harsh and 
austere Cromwell ; and it is not unlikely that if he w 
given full rein we should be treated to the spectacle in 
this enlightened clay and generation of some unceremoni- 
ous beheading, the victims of which would be not kings 
of the blood royal, but eminent political leaders, who .it 
present indulge In their comings and goings in undoubted 
security and safety to theirproperty and persons. 

As a type of the austere and thoroughly jaundiced 
Cromwellian reform editor, we may take an uncompromis- 
ing promulgate >r i >f Pharisaic grievances and d< tctrines wh< i 
has his abode and his newspap lishment in Doyles- 

town, Pennsylvania. The burden of his complaint through 
the spring and the summer, the autumn and the gray 
winter is United States Senator Quay. lie is ferocious 
in his rage against this particular Republican leader, and 
the wonder is that the consuming passion of hate, which 
is supposed to be destructive in its effects on man's 
physical system, has not before this time made itself felt 
on the frame of the Doylestown Cromwell. 

It is not improbable there is an intention on the part of 
this desperate editorial man to fight the hated Quay with 
his finger nails and perhaps also with his teeth, as the 
thoroughly aroused spirit of the " Protector," — fresh from 
the inspiring experience of a meeting with our "best 
citizens " in the Philadelphia Board of Trade rooms, to 
devise means to overthrow the dreadful Quay, — whereat 
Mr. Editor found his importance enhanced by unusual 
attentions from those desirous of enlisting his services — 



Pha 71 

delivers the ultimatum through his newspaper which a 
cowering world may read with fear and trembling, thus: 

44 The Anti-Quay Republicans are in earnest in tin- 
purpose they have undertaken, and it may as well In- 
understood the}* propose to fight Quay an ism 
with any and all weapons available — even to the 
tremity resorted to last year, the defeat of Republican 
legislative nominees who owe or tender fealty to Quay/ 1 

The imagination of the reader may roam over a vast 
field in its quest after all the instruments of torture which 
the witeh-burn : ng editor's fieree and boundless wrath 
makes permissible in his declaration of war against this 
partieular Republican leader and member of the United 
States Senate; may wander from the editorial natural 
weapons previousl) -ted, which seem so much in 

keeping with the womanish, nervous tension of Sir Editor 
himself, to the devices of torture employed by the Spanish 
inquisition and may make choice of whatever the more 
or less blood thirsty cravings of his nature shall elect, 
with assurance of the prompt appr< f this magnan- 

imous 1 f human punishment 

It is possible that if Mr had taken time from his 

pursuit of National affairs, had dropped his somewhat 

ible and trying task of electing a Republi 
President in [888, J ' hairman of the 

Republican I il Committo iken 

himself to 1 to Mr. Kditor, 

the above proclamation - I iminate warfare against 



72 Pharisee and Witch-Burner in Modern Politics 

him "with any and all weapons available" would never 
have been written. In the consideration of the question 
of what was wisest at the time the fact should be borne 
in mind that about six million voting people were directly 
interested in the result of the work which he had been 
selected to perform, and had he left "the party helm," 
even for such a short time as would love been necessary 
for him to take his visiting card to our dissatisfied Reform 
Editor in Doylestown, some of those six million might 
have raised protests and objections. In Mich event there 
may be a reasonable doubt whether the supposed truant 
Chairman's explanation that he had "gone to Doy 

town to keep from incurring the enmity ofa certain Rrf >rm 

Editor "would have satisfied the clamorous legions in 
whose eyes the aforesaid editor would unquestionably 
appear as an object infinitcsimally small in comparison 

with the importance of that political General, Quay, who 
led them to victory and whose stalwart figure is such a 
shining target for the Editorial Lilliputian's petty shafts 
at this time. 

The reader will readily observe that even Reform 
Editors are fallible ; that they have their ailments, their 
spells of indigestion, their attacks of jaundice, their over- 
wrought nerves. If eminent, or prominent public men 
over-look them it is to be regretted, but at the same time 
it is doubtful if the unintentional failure to recognize their 
transcendent ability and superior worth justifies the forma- 
tion ofa movement or an organization, having in view 
the political destruction of those guilty of the crime of 
failing to render due homage to their importance as 



Pharisee and Witch-Burner in Modem Politics. t| 

"moulders of public opinion." Those six million people 
who in 1888 went fairly mad with joy upon the announce- 
ment of the result of the Presidential election and paid 
due honors to the General who brought about the victory 
in their spontaneous vocal outburst 

"Quay! Quay! 
Won the Day!" 

would hardly cast their decision, supposing them to be 
sitting as a jury on the trial of the grievances of our 
Cromwellian Doylestown Editor and his Pharisaic patrons, 
whether they be banded together as a "provisional com- 
mittee " of dissatisfied tariff men, and dissatisfied stock- 
holders in foreign insurance companies or not, — in favor 
of fighting the political Commander in question " with 
any and all weapons available." 

Yet it would be obviously wrong for us to be harsh 
with the Doylestown Editor and his Pharisaic brethren 
on the "provisional committee" for their part against 
this noted Republican General. From the beginning of 
the world it has been customary for the strong, the 
vigorous and the lusty leaders of men to experience 
the effects of the jealousy, the envy, the malice and the 
general uncharitableness of the small-minded and petty 
ones. Incapable of rising to the height of the leaders 
whom they assail, incapable of performing acts which 
command the attention of their fellow-men and thus 
give them prominence, they wonder h >W it is that oil. 
have so much fame and celebrity while they are com- 
pelled to go through life unnoticed by the world. The 



74 Pharisee and Witch-Burner in Modern Politics. 

political General, Quay, whom our Pharisaic brethren 
and their Doylestown Cromwellian adjunct arc so vigor- 
ously aimifig their Lillipution arrows at, is known throuj 

out the length and breadth of a nation of nearly seventy 

million souls as the Republican leader who managed to 
a successful issue the campaign of his political party for 
the Presidency in 1888. The Pharisees who have band- 
ed themseh ther as his assailants, with their u 1 
visional committee" are unknown beyond the < 
of the city of their habitation. Th their grievance 
and their grudj list this party lead r. The result 
of his work has been to compel them to use the products 
of the workingmen of their own country rather than the 
fruits of the work of the lab f Europe. If they 
wish to continue to sell foreign-made goods to the 
American public they must pay a higher import dufc 
get it here. They do not desire to pay the higher duty, 
and they do not wish to encourage the manufacture and 
sale of American stockings, American woolens and 
American fabrics. The cheap labor of the older world 
enables them to buy the material lower there and sell it 
higher in their own country. 

44 Gentlemen of the provisional committee for the defeat 
of Quay and Quayism, is this not so?" 

In the pursuit of the object of his hatred the political 
Pharisee will not scruple, as we have heretofore shown, 
to exaggerate all he may hear that is to the discredit of 
the leader whom he and his band seek to overthrow. 
Their ears are ever set to receive reports that defame 
him, their tongues are ever ready to spread the hurtful 



Pharisee an J Witch-Burner in A Politics. 

rumor, and their minds, like the poison that is wai 

from the Upas tree, are ever prepared to shed upon the 
sunshine of fair belief and rational content of mind 
over every day experience, the shadow of culumny, 
suspicion and distrust and uneharitableness, and make 
men feel there is no good in anything of a political 
character, whether it be men or methods, save it shall 
come from the hands of Pharisees themseh ited 

to their liking and conveyed to the citizens after the form 
and style of the Pharisaic order. 

Thus, reader, have we described, or attempted to 
describe, this singular element in our modern polit 
If the mind of any one who shall have followed the 
description is led to reflect and to observe in his daily 
life more closely the traits of character of the persons 
who are the subject of this work, and the judgment 
the question of their motives is thus rendered mo 
ample will have been the reward for the effort made and 
the aim which prompted the undertaking. 



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